The governing body overseeing Olympic curling has decided that no rules were broken after reviewing footage of the round robin match between Sweden and Canada.
The tense competition between the two countries rose to a fever pitch Friday night, after Sweden’s Oskar Eriksson accused Canada’s Marc Kennedy of double-touching the stone.
“Maybe it’s okay touching the rock after the hog line, I don’t know,” Eriksson said loud enough for Kennedy to hear.
Kennedy shot back, “Who’s doing it? I haven’t done it once, you can f*ck off.”
The two continued a war of words in which all the profanities seemed to be coming from the Canadian side. Finally, Kennedy said, “Come on, Oskar, just f*ck off.”
World Curling issued a statement addressing on Saturday addressing the cheating allegations and the ensuing argument.
“Game Umpires are situated at the end of each sheet and physically cannot see every delivery infraction. However, when they are made aware of delivery issues, game umpires are positioned to observe the delivery for three ends. During this period of observation in the Friday evening game, there were no violations recorded,” the statement began, noting that video replay is not used during games and an umpire’s call is final.”
As for the accusation of double-touching, the governing body reiterated that multiple touches are allowed, except that “touching the handle after the hog line is not allowed and will result in the stone being removed from play.”
Beginning on Saturday, the commission plans to have two officials on hand to oversee all deliveries.
Canada was also issued a verbal warning from World Curling for Kennedy’s language during the game.
“During that meeting it was made clear to those officials that further inappropriate behavior, determined by rule R.19 would result in additional sanctions,” the statement read.
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